


Dead Man Walking

by Carmenlire



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Canon, References to Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 13:16:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19442218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: Standing on the ledge of the Institute’s roof, Alec looks down and feels like he could cry from sheer dread and untempered exhaustion.This is his life. This is the rest of his life.These feelings have crawled into his bones. Sometimes, he wonders how people look at him and manage not to see everything that’s lying just under the surface, a toxic stream, a blasphemous yearning.





	Dead Man Walking

**Author's Note:**

> Note this contains references to self harm, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Sometimes he wonders if people would be shocked.

If they heard a rogue vampire had gotten to him, that a demon had finally caught him unawares, would people be surprised to learn Alec Lightwood was dead.

If his body was found floating in the Hudson, washed up on dirty shores, would his fellow shadowhunters wonder, would whispers follow.

Would his mother shrug it off without a hitch in her step, would Jace and Izzy be secretly relieved.

Alec closes his eyes and they burn. Exhaustion rides him hard. It’s bone deep. There’s no escape.

He’s tried.

His sleep is shit lately. It takes him ages to fall asleep and then it’s restless. Sometimes it’s deep but he wakes up after what seems bare minutes. No matter if it’s an hour or twelve, he’s always tired, always feels like he spends the day dragging himself around, his soul a bloody, bruised pulp behind him.

Chains rattle, ominously in the distance. He wishes he wasn’t different. He wishes he was normal.

He wishes he was different. He wishes he could be content with convention, with what’s expected of him, with the life that was cast the moment he was born to Robert and Maryse Lightwood.

The eldest, the one sworn to wear the thorny crown that’s never fit quite right, that's left him with scars that he worries can never be healed.

There’s no life for him like this. He spends an ordinate amount of time angry, so damned furious that he chokes on it. He feels like he could suffocate on these feelings of bitterness and resentment.

Standing on the ledge of the Institute’s roof, Alec looks down and feels like he could cry from sheer dread and untempered exhaustion.

This is his life. This is the rest of his life.

These feelings have crawled into his bones. Sometimes, he wonders how people look at him and don't see everything that’s lying just under the surface, a toxic stream, a blasphemous yearning.

Along with the shame and the pervasive heaviness that seeps into every inch of his life. The desperate hope for something to change, even if he knows nothing will, that nothing can.

So, sometimes he lays awake at night and stares up at his ceiling with burning eyes. He walks along ledges and feels the tiniest compulsion to let himself fall. He stands in the middle of the control center and looks around and feels like he’s dying, like he’s already dead and how can nobody see that.

Why don’t they care.

Why can’t he just be like everyone else.

It’s everything, he thinks dourly. 

Iz looks at him once in awhile like she can see through him, into his very soul. When he sees those looks or hears her cheerful ribbing, he wants to recoil.

_I’m not who you think_ , he wants to yell. _I can’t be who you need._

_You’re better off without m_ e.

He’s plagued by these thoughts. Guilt riddles him, fills his chest with acid. 

It’s a not inconsiderable miracle that he’s here, all things considered. Most of him is still surprised that he’d made it to graduation. He remembers thinking _if_ \-- if he made it through the Academy-- and at first, the thought had been striking.

Was he really so low? Were things really that dire?

But like everything else, it became his new normal. The day he’d walked through the portal back the the New York Institute, lone bag from the Academy in his hand, he’d been proud. No one knew about his little deadline but he'd made it, even through the doubt, even though sometimes it had taken everything he had to stay.

Each day is something. Each day is not a given.

Whispers reach every waking moment and sometimes he thinks he’d do anything to quiet the voices. The dead tones that tell him he’s a shit shadowhunter, the numb voice that tells him everyone would be better off without his dead weight dragging them down.

_If only people new_ , it whispers. _You’re carefully built house of cards is an illusion and it’s just a matter of time until it all comes crumbling down_.

It’s just a matter of time.

He hurts but it’s not enough. He bleeds but it worries him, because it’s not working as well as it used to be. Now he has to train harder, longer. The pain has to cut deeper and it’s a little frightening when he stops and thinks about it, so he just doesn’t.

His life is murky shades of gray and the thought of years and years of this-- a lifetime-- is terrible, appalling. Obscene.

Everything’s getting darker and he doesn’t know what to do about it. Even if he did, he’s not sure he’d have the energy.

Most of him is numb. Most of him is so tired that everything else fades into the background, a dismal hum to his life.

Days blend together, marked by missions and headaches and these feelings that score his throat and turn his mouth to ash.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t know why he’s like this and he wonders if it’s meant to be, if he should stop fighting it so hard.

Maybe the voice is right, he thinks. At first it spreads across his consciousness like ink but then it makes a home there with all the other thoughts.

It becomes a part of him.

He’s so tired.

If only it could all stop, just for a while, he muses. He knows this is life and this is adulthood but he needs a timeout.

Every day gets a bit harder. Harder still when no one notices, when he feels like there’s a veil between him and everyone else and he can’t find the other side no matter where he looks or how desperately he searches.

When he’s by himself and looking down at oblivion, when he looks around and sees his peers stuck in this endless cycle that makes a shadowhunter’s life, he wonders what they’d all say if one morning, he wasn’t there.

Would there be surprise or glee. Disappointment or apathy.

_What is the point_ , he screams to himself. _Is this it? Is this all there is?_

What happens next.

Will he live long enough to see it.

Do people care if he does.

Does he care if he doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr or twitter @carmenlire!


End file.
